


To Keep Her Kindled

by elebuu



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Cid is a precious cinnamon roll, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavensward, Heavensward Spoilers, Vault spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 14:19:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7979800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elebuu/pseuds/elebuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I figured after I inaugurated myself as a fic author on here with total sin that I owed the universe something else Cid/WoL. THERE WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH. Obvs Vault/post-Vault spoilers, though no namedrops. I love Cid so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Keep Her Kindled

**Author's Note:**

> I sort of wrote this for myself, because olol emotions.

She seemed so far away from his reach that he hesitated. She hunched over her own knees, squeezing her belly with a vice of her crossed arms; the look she cast down and out was hollow, and he could infer the reasons her lower lids were raw.

The Vault had twisted her fate, yes; and it had stolen part of her soul from her in the process. Cid watched her only a second more, a slicing breeze whipping the flurries in front of his face; failing, on her part, to do more than flick at her hair. His Warrior tried hard to accept duty eagerly, with conviction, and to withhold her worst bereavement when victory slipped away from her. Her attempt at remaining stoic, stone walls around her heart for privacy, was crumbling. It was a destruction as total and as terrible as if all of Ishgard had begun to slacken around them.

His footfalls tapped lightly on the grey cobbles, muffled by a thin layer of pack left behind by an earlier snow. The knot of heavy sorrow in his chest tightened as he moved to the alcove, to the bench where she was seated—a contorted funerary statue, impassive to the freezing elements around her. Cid even briefly entertained the absurd thought that in her grief, to actual stone she would turn, and his brave young Warrior would lose all her light for good. The same light that had once guided him home, he recalled.

He’d rather see the stars burned out of the heavens, if that were ever to occur.

Yet, there she was, breathing stiffly, whether against the cold or the gale force of her grief. He carefully circled the side of the bench, pausing a distance beside her. She registered the first conscious reaction he had seen from her in hours—the hours that felt like days—lifting her head to meet his eyes. In gesture only, he thought, swallowing harder than he would have liked to, as eyes he barely recognized searched for him. Blind, empty. A few dark moments later, they began to cloud, a river rising in each.

Her lips drew over her clenching teeth, her expression collapsing. She had come back to the earth and stone, and she opened the dam of her broken heart to him. A strangled groan tore open her voice, and she sobbed, all over again. Cid found his mouth cracked open in alarm, stepping toward her with one foot, his hand outstretched to her.

He was hesitating again—until she struggled upwards to keep him in her sights, as if he alone anchored her to a place where her grieving would one day be over. “Cid… _Cid_ …” His Light called to him like a prayer, albeit one of shared and terrible knowledge. He leaned over her side just a bit, tentative hands and his soft expression wordlessly asking her— _is this alright? May I touch you? May I give you a shoulder…?_ —and with a nod of assent, her lids closed tightly against one another and poured a tide of tears down her cheeks.

Cid felt his own eyes sting. Sometimes, she seemed so invincible to him, determined, graceful, powerful. He regretted his own oversight; she was also mortal flesh and bone, and her heart could still shatter.

And shatter it had.

He brought himself to sit partway on the bench next to her, forgetting the chill of the creeping twilight. She shook, choking as fresh tears drowned her. Careful not to overwhelm her, Cid slowly wrapped his arms around her shoulders. When she leaned into the embrace, her face burrowing into his chest, he pulled her a little closer, one of his hands gently squeezing the back of her shoulder, his thumb brushing softly on the back of her neck. She trembled and wept, rivulets of her tears tracing lines down his exposed chest, between the lapels of his coat.

“I’m here,” he whispered, his lips hovering over the top of her head. Trembling arms wrapped around his chest, slipping under his own arms, and she held him tightly in return. It made his heart hurt. He loved her. 

Cid tilted his head to rest his cheek on the peak of her forehead. He closed his eyes and waited, waited without care for the hour, as she gradually slowed, first to hitching, then to quiet weeping. He lost track of how long he’d spent rubbing her upper back, when finally his chest no longer felt damp. She had closed her eyes against him, spent.

When she looked up at his eyes again at last, she was still broken; but the warmth had returned. She would heal. Not quickly, not soon, and maybe never completely, but she was alive in her mending.

Cid braved a soft kiss on the top of her head. His Light answered with a weak and struggling shadow of a smile, but she leaned in to accept. Snow fluttered into their wind-wicked hair, as she reluctantly withdrew from where he held her. “We should return to the manor,” she whispered, hoarsely. 

Duty called, grim and unyielding. He acquiesced, rising to his feet.

An arm stayed around her side as they strode on, supporting her lead weight. _I’m here._

_I’m here._


End file.
